viz. - Obama

Cartooning Obama

Nate Kreuter — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:19:43 +0000

Right off the bat, I want to say that I'm not accusing contemporary political cartoonists of creating racist depictions of Barack Obama. But I do wonder, is that tough to avoid? Political cartoons typically accentuate the subject's features in unflattering ways. They're caricatures. Remember George W. Bush's enlarged ears? The problem is that, with the nation's first African-American President, cartoonists have to avoid a whole history of racist cartooning. They have to simultaneously do what they've always done, which is make fun of the most powerful person in the world, but without referencing a racist visual history.

Consider this racist cartoon:

(Image from the Ferris State University Jim Crow Museum)

That's probably a scary referent to have in the cartoon history books if you're an editorial cartoonist working today. I'd be curious to hear what others have noticed on this dilemma, but it seems to me that most cartoonists are simply emphasizing Obama's skinniness and height, so as to avoid any of the racist references. But then there are some cartoons, like this one, that seem to be flirting with the historical racist images:

Remote Sensing and the Obama Inauguration

Nate Kreuter — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:35:03 +0000

Much was made of the crowds that attended President Obama's inauguration in Washington, DC last week.

As evidence of remote sensing's (that is, satellite image's) greater role in public consciousness, check out this image of the crowds gathered for the historic moment, shot at one-half meter resolution. (One-half, or.5, meter resolution means, more or less, that the smallest units discernible in the image are .5 x .5 meters, about the size of a person from above. The resolution is roughly equivalent on the NIIRS scale, which is the military/intelligence community's rating scale for remotely sensed image interpretability.)

Increasingly news organizations are citing remotely sensed images in their reporting. Whether this is a techno-fad or provides a legitimately new and informative perspective on events, I'd be curious to hear readers' opinions on.

Image courtesy of GeoEye (click link for a larger resolution photo, as well as additional remotely sensed images)

Cipher-Obama

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:41:22 +0000

Like Sarah, I've been paying a lot of attention lately to how journalists photograph the two presidential candidates. (And I apologize that this image is so tiny.)

Photographer Damon Winter, for the New York Times, has been following Obama on the campaign trail and generating a wealth of stunning, provocative photographs. When I saw this one on the home page -- it was the first slide in an interactive slideshow that ran on October 24 -- I started thinking about one of the major criticisms of Obama leading up to the Democratic primary.

There were those who said he had no substance, that he was all rhetoric, all hope and change and empty promises. A related criticism was the idea that he was a cipher, a blank screen onto which every American could project whatever she wished.

And aren't those ideas just what this photograph suggests? We can't see Obama's features, but we know his silhouette by now, and in this image it stands out in black against the blue, yellow, and white sky. Devoid of context, Obama's figure seems other-worldly and enigmatic. Blank he is -- all emptiness ready to be filled with the dreams of voters.

Listening to Winter talk about his journey with Obama during this campaign -- he says that he's taken tens of thousands of photographs of the senator -- I get the feeling that he's sympathetic to and probably supportive of Obama's candidacy. Does a photograph like this make a statement, one way or another, about Obama's readiness, his substance? Is that what Winter's thinking about, or does he just want to take a beautiful picture? And does it matter?

You can see an earlier Damon Winter slideshow here.

Obama poster art

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:59:33 +0000

"The Thinker," by gausa

A recent New York Times "Campaign Stops" blog brought my attention to the incredible variety of poster art being produced in support of Obama. The blog post I link to here discusses a few of the images in detail, but it leaves a lot untouched.

At the Design/ers for Obama site, graphic designers submit their pro-Obama poster designs, visitors to the site rate the posters, and anyone can print them out. The group, founded by two seniors at the Rhode Island School of Design, seeks to "bring the spirit of grassroots style organizing and collaboration to poster design." It's visually stunning, interactive, provocative, free -- and also very weird. My thoughts on a few of the posters follow.

This one was a big hit among viewers, garnering a score of 3.3 out of 5 (which seems to be quite high, given the preponderance of 1.4s and 2.1s). It's a beautiful poster, but what bothers me is the way Obama and the American flag bleed into each other. Are metonymic assertions of Obama as nation any more excusable than attacks on his patriotism? Here, Obama's trademark sun on the horizon hovers above his head like a halo, and he has the glow of virtue and the determined look of the anointed on his face. It was just this kind of image that got under my skin so much during the primary race.

"Obama Commemorative," by Changethethought

While most of the posters are pro-Obama in that they tout his accomplishments, character, and potential, some of them are pro-Obama in that they are anti-McCain/Palin. This one didn't get a particularly good score on the site; viewers thought that it went too far in poking fun at the Palins' youngest child, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. What startled me about it before I even noticed the "baby"'s face was the caption. "We don't need another Bushbaby" -- ? Who was our first Bushbaby? And is the reference to "the bush," i.e. wilderness, purposeful? Is Trig a bush baby because he comes from the wilderness of Alaska?

"Bushbaby poster," by ameyer

I found this one eerie, but asking viewers to consider the historical connections between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama is a powerful move.

"Abraham Obama," by aperryz

Though this one's arresting, I can't help but agree with the comment a viewer left below it: "is he like underwater? in a tank?"

"Hope in Our Reach," by mikewirthart

And then there are some that don't look professional at all.

"Obama Earth," by amypb

But that's the fun of it, it seems -- a democracy of the visual.

Obama's Design

LaurenMitchell — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:31:15 +0000

As far as design goes, Obama has already won the presidency according to this New York Times article.

Apparently continuity in design is crucial to a campaign in the same way that a consistent message is, and Obama has been out-doing McCain and Clinton at least in this arena. Branding expert Brian Collins says that “From the bold ‘change’ signs to their engaging Web site to their recognizable lapel pins, [the Obama campaign has] used a single-minded visual strategy to deliver their campaign’s message with greater consistency and, as a result, greater collective impact.” Obama is also able to send a coherent message via the multitude of different media sources that we’re using today. It doesn’t stop there though--even Obama’s font is hip.

He’s using Gotham, which is modeled after the font used on signs at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. According to Collins, it has a “blunt, geometric simplicity” but also manages to be “warm.” I don’t know about all that, but it looks good to me.

I also found it interesting that he’s been able to personalize his brand through the use of state-specific buttons that fuse a state’s abbreviation letters with his familiar “O” symbol.

I agree with Collins in that it’s appropriate for a man who is clearly in tune with the power of rhetoric to also understand the power of visual rhetoric and design.